


I love you, Always, forever

by natcat5



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Crushes, Gift Fic, Highschool AU, M/M, babies in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natcat5/pseuds/natcat5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Confessions are hard. Love is hard. Highschool is hard. (thankfully, John's head is pretty hard as well)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I love you, Always, forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teecups](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teecups/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Dana!

When you are seven years old, you decide that you are going to marry John Egbert.

It’s a pretty obvious decision at the time. He laughs at all your jokes, he thinks your sunglasses are lame, but doesn’t bully you about them. He stays inside and plays card games with you when it’s too sunny for you to go out for recess. He isn’t freaked out by all your Bro’s weird butt puppets (he says his dad’s clowns are just as creepy), and he listens when you go off on rambly tangents. Okay, yeah, he laughs at you when you finish rambling, but doesn’t cut you off while you're talking, or walk away like the teachers and other students do.

So, yeah, obviously you have to marry him. That’s what Bro said, right? You marry the person who can put up with everything that’s weird about you. And at seven years old, the only person who puts up with your weirdness is John.

When you are ten years old, it becomes obvious that marrying John Egbert will not be as straightforward as you initially thought it would be.  For one thing, you can’t just ask him on a date. Because you’re both dudes, and you know now that that’s a thing most people aren’t cool with. You can’t even hold his hand or anything, or even tell him that he looks cute in his new shirt or that you really like the way his laugh sounds. Guys don’t tell each other stuff like that.

These revelations are immensely discouraging, especially when you enter middle school and John seems to be set on marrying a perfect girl and living behind a white picket fence with 2 children and a dog.

So you make the executive decision to push your plans of matrimonial union with your best bro onto the back burner. Except you actually shove the plans far into the back of your mental closet and pile lots of shit on top of it and block its existence from your memory.

Because yeah. You and John? Obviously not a thing that’s happening in this universe.

And you’re okay with that, because he’s still your best friend, and he’s still there to take all your weird shit with a smile. In fact, it’s pretty fucking awful that you ever considered having him as more than a friend. You’re the last person who would deserve getting showered with those sunny smiles and looking into those bright blue eyes every morning. Quite frankly, you are not good enough for the boy you have a tremendous crush on.

So you move on.

Years pass, time flies by, and you’re both seniors in high school. Somehow, you managed to shake your reputation as the weird vampire kid who likes pickled dead things, and cultivate a persona for yourself as the cool, unapproachable, somewhat hipster-douchebag popular kid Dave Strider. You replaced your anime shades with a rounded pair that John bought you when you were thirteen, and suddenly you were a rebel instead of a geek. You stopped rambling at everyone who gave you the time of day, and somehow developed a reputation as being quiet and mysterious (Bro was laughing about that for days). Basically, you put up a nice fake mask for four years and coasted through the social world beautifully because of it. Missed out on the dating scene because all the hair-twirling nasally-voiced girls who approached you were in love with the persona, not with you. Not that you’re complaining, you weren’t interested in dating anyone anyways. Love, plain and simple, was for shmucks.

John did pretty okay in high school too. He was the in-every-club-possible kid, with a thousand and one friends who he always stopped to chat with in the hallway. It made it really hard to get a moment alone to talk with him, since he was either busy or surrounded by a large group. The two of you ran in different circles, and while you still talked regularly over the internet, you didn’t spend much time together in person.

You’d like to say that that time apart helped you get over any lingering feelings you had for John, but that would be the farthest fucking thing from the truth. In fact, you watched for four years as John went from short and round to solid with arms that would have made Thor proud. You watched as he went from a goofy tactless troublemaker, to a kind, helpful teenager who sometimes set off pranks in the cafeteria and still kinda lacked tact. But that’s not all you noticed. You noticed that he never kicked the habit of biting at his bottom lip when he was nervous. That he was only close friends with a few people, and the consistently light-hearted exterior he maintained was as much of a mask as your cool and collected one was. You noticed that he didn’t like being inside for long periods of time, and that when he was running track or jumping long jump, he’d always close his eyes, and cut through the air with a half smile on his face.

You noticed that he chewed the ends of his pencils, that he skipped rather than walked, that he opened the door for girls he wasn’t friends with, and pretended to open the door for girls he was friends with, only to let it slam shut on their faces. You noticed he wasn’t above tying someone’s shoelaces together for a joke, and that a quiet John in class meant that someone was getting a dose of whiteglue and feathers.

Online, he talked less about ghosts and his shitty taste in movies and more about the environment and molecular genetics and sometimes piano. He talked about saving the world starting at the genes, and then building his way up from there. He talked about playing piano at bars, at concert halls. He talked about opening up a joke shop.

It’s only online that you hear about these things though. At school, it’s all about the sports, the clubs, the harmless pranks, and you find it strangely ironic that you see John Egbert so little but seem to know the most about him.

You watched his eyes get bluer and his smile get wider and somehow you actually fell more in love with him with every passing day.  

On the last day of senior year, you get a text from him asking to meet up at an old playground the two of you used to play at when you were little. It’s unexpected, and catches you completely by surprise, as you thought he was going to a party hosted by one of his friends on the Track and Field team, but you don’t hesitate before agreeing. You remember the park well, you used to play there all the time when you were kids. It’s kind of in a super shitty spot, right in front of a busy road, but the city planners never got around to moving it or even putting a guardrail up between the road and the park. The place is always loud with the sound of cars but that just means it’s usually empty.

It’s dumb the way your heart beat starts to quicken as you walk briskly towards the park. It’s so stupid, but you can’t help it. All of your Bro’s goddmaned animes are playing through your head, every teen drama, every gushy chick flick. And some idiotic part of you is saying that this is it. The big scene where the hero discovers that his crush feels the same way. That the crippling uncertainty of ten years will be swept under the rug and the two of you will run off into the sunset.

Except it’s not a crush. Calling a crush isn’t right. It’s…it’s something different. Something…deeper. You, well, you might actually be in love with the guy.

And you really, really want to tell him.

It’s been ten years and now you really want to tell him how you feel. It’s probably the worst thing you could do, and will probably total your friendship, but god, you’ve been burning up with these feelings for so long. And the two of you are going to different colleges and may never see each other again. So if you don’t do it now, when _will_ you do it?

The answer is never, and somehow, that doesn’t sit well with you anymore. That’s not the outcome you want. You don’t want to pretend that this swelling, warm feeling in your chest doesn’t exist. Not anymore. Even if he reacts badly, even if he backpedals away so fast he burns a hole in his tire, you want to tell him.

You want to tell him.

When you reach the park, John is sitting at the end of one of the slides. He’s by himself, and he turns his head at the sound of your sneakers crunching into the gravel. The wide grin that spreads across his face as he sees you beats back your feelings of apprehension and embarrassment until they’re cowering in a corner, and you’re left to face John with nothing but the butterflies in your stomach and the dokis in your heart.

He waves a hand for you to come over, and your feet start shuffling closer. You manage to sit down on the slide beside him with some difficulty, because this is the first time in four years you and John have really been alone together, just the two of you.

And it does feel weird, because John is still shorter than you, but now he’s more muscular, and he’s got a wisp above his lip that puts your pale fuzz to shame. His face is still round, but not chubby, and his glasses have been replaced with a thicker pair. The changes all seem superficial, because those eyes and that smile are still the same, but you can’t deny that he’s probably changed a lot more than is outwardly obvious.

Still, the two of you start talking easily enough. The same casual shit you chat about online. You talk about the shitty shows on tv, the shitty movies in the theatres, and you tease John for his continual bad taste, while he snarks that you’re not allowed to criticize because you hide all of your bad taste behind the pretext of ‘irony’.

The conversation continues like that for awhile, and you feel lighter than you have in a long time. It’s so much better in person. You can hear John’s quiet breaths, feel his warmth beside you, hear the sounds of him shifting, watch him run his fingers through his hair awkwardly as he gives an embarrassed laugh. Soak in that smile, and the depth of those bright blue eyes.

You have to fight to keep your poker face in place, fight to stop a small smile from creeping up on you. Because shit, yeah, this is nice. Better than nice actually It’s goddamn great. And it also sucks, because now you don’t want to say anything to mess it up. You don’t want to tell him how you really feel, and shatter this happy bubble that the two of you are sitting in now. You just…want to stay like this.

But your eyes stray to his lips more often than you’d care to admit, and while you love this you also love him and want to kiss those lips and probably get gouged by those damn beaver teeth. You want to, but you can’t. You can’t. And you can’t even find the words to begin to explain what you’re feeling.

So you laugh at his lame joke, and pretend your heart isn’t beating a mile a minute.  

“It’s been awhile since we’ve been together like this, hasn’t it?” comments John with a wistful smile, and you nod in response, kicking stones of gravel with your feet as you do.

“Yeah, tough to get together when one of us is the one-man whirlwind, doing literally every activity that the school has to offer,” you reply with a smirk. And you’re teasing him, really, because you think it’s awesome that John can do so many things and interact with so many people so easily (as opposed to you, who has the social grace of a turtle).

But John doesn’t seem to take it that way, because he frowns and turns away from you, clutching at the sides of the slide as you stares down at the ground. You immediately tense up, because shit, shit, what did you say? Fuck. Did you piss him off? Is he mad at you? Or worse, did you make him sad?

Shit.

You don’t want to start rambling about nonsense in your attempt to ask what’s wrong, so you struggle with yourself, trying to find the words to say to break the awful silence that’s descended between the two of you. However, just as you’ve begun to formulate sentences, John lifts his head and turns towards you, biting his bottom lip in that nervous way of his.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and you immediately start to protest because no fuck it was a joke you’re not mad or anything. But John shushes you and stops your rambling, looking at you with a stubborn look in his eyes and teeth digging into one side of his lip.

“I know we haven’t gotten to hang out as much over the past few years, and I know it’s mostly my fault,” he continues sheepishly, turning his head away to stare at his feet, “And talking online isn’t quite the same. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with talking online! But it kind of sucks that that’s the only place we’ve been talking, since we see each other every day and all. It’s dumb. I’m dumb. We should have at least gone to see movies together over the weekends or something.”

“If that was your only idea for bro-time I’m glad we passed over it. I know your taste in movies is still horrible,” you say dryly, a little surprised that John actually missed hanging out. It’s not like he didn’t have a hundred and one other people to go places with.

He laughs a little, but you see his fingers dig into the legs of his pants, and it dies away quickly.

“I’m serious though,” he mutters, smile fading into nothing, “It’s just- I see you everyday in the hallway, right? And you’re wearing those shades I gave you, and walking by yourself, and ignoring everyone and being really cool and stuff. And I just laugh in my head because you still do that twitchy thing where you reach for your sword whenever someone’s behind you, because of you think it's your Bro. And I don’t really get how no one else has noticed that? But it’s still hilarious. And you give everyone who talks to you these short, monosyllabic sentences but I know that you still ramble a mile a minute in your head, like you do online, and it’s just. I don’t know. There are things that are the same, like that hilarious twitch, and things that are different, like how you keep your rambling and stupid metaphors to yourself now. And you part your hair the same way, but leave it hanging in your eyes instead of tucked behind your ears. And I think it’s because you’ve given up on letting anyone see you? And I think that’s dumb, because you’re awesome, and I always felt really bad, because you always looked like you were alone, but you also always looked like you wanted to be alone. And-,”

John sucks in a breath, and looks at you worriedly. He looks like he wants you to say something, but you’re fucking speechless. You never in your wildest dreams imagined that John thought about you as much as you thought about him. Or that he noticed the little dumb things you did the same way you noticed the dumb things he did. He always seemed so busy, so heavily involved in the school’s social world. You never thought you were on his mind at any other moment than when you were talking online.

Your mind is whirring, and you can’t quite get words past your lips. John seems to realize you’re not going to say anything, so he turns away, looking down at the ground again.

“I started to wonder all the things that changed about you, and what it meant about us,” he continues quietly, “I mean- what else changed? I know things about me changed as well. Did that mean we couldn’t do the same things that we used to? Like, if we ever got the chance to get together again. You used to want to go into music like your Bro, but you took that film class and hung around the photography club and then I didn’t know anymore. So I, I got scared I guess? I mean, there were so many times I wanted to call you up to hang out, but I kept getting scared that maybe, outside of the chatroom, we had grown too different? That our friendship wouldn’t work anymore if it was face to face.”

John looks up at you again, and he’s gnawing on his lip like it’s a piece of prime rib.

“And I really, _really_ didn’t want that. I mean, the whole reason I joined so many things and stopped hanging out with you after school was because I wanted to stay friends with you.”

Wait.

_What?_

“What?” you demand, because what the fuck that makes no sense. Literally, no sense. He stopped hanging out with you because he wanted to stay friends? That. What. No.

“John,” you begin, and it comes out a little strained because seriously what the fuck, “That literally makes no sense. What the hell are you trying to say?”

John’s entire body freezes up, like someone pressed pause on his existence. A few long seconds pass, and his tongue snakes out to lick nervously at his lips. You watch his hands slowly clench into fists, and hear him suck in a breath.

“Dave,” he begins, his voice sounding strained and choked, “I wanted to stop spending so much time with you because I started to feel...well I, about you, I...I just..." 

He swallows thickly, and slowly turns to look back down at the ground. "Dave, I think I'm in l-,"

Whatever he’s about to say is cut off by the loud screeching of tires that comes from behind you, and the sound of crashing metal and shattering glass. Both of you whip your heads around and holy fucking shit Christ.

There’s been an accident on the road right in front of the playground, and one of the cars is lying sideways in the middle of traffic, causing everything to screech to a halt.

But the other car…

The other car is has a blown tire and it’s heading straight for you.

“John, MOVE!” you scream, grabbing onto his shirt and rolling off the edge of the slide. You hear and feel the car crash into the side of the jungle gym, and swear as the entire thing starts to collapse. The upper section is tumbling sideways towards you, and you stare at it in horror for a stunned second before John shoves your shoulder roughly and sends you sliding across the gravel, just out of reach of the tumbling structure.

Everything is too loud and too much and your hands and face is bleeding and there’s smoke in the air and you think your sunglasses are cracked. You push yourself up onto your hands and knees and stay that way for a few seconds of disorientation, before you jolt back to reality and whip your head around.

“John!” you scream, getting shakily to your feet and running back to the wreckage of the playground. Other people are on the scene now, rushing towards the driver of the car, rushing towards you. But you have eyes only for the still form lying beneath the mangled remains of the jungle gym.

_No._

_God no._

You can’t breathe. You can’t even see straight. You start blindly pulling at the metal structure trapping your friend and don’t even notice when other people come and start helping. They’re asking you questions, asking you your name or some shit, but the words are like white noise, and you’re barely aware of anything but John.

You finally pull him free, and you unceremoniously shove away all the other people crowding around him, snarling fiercely and hissing that you know First Aid as well so they can back the fuck off.

You check is breathing, his circulation, and are massively relieved to discover that he’s alive and breathing. But his head is bleeding, and it looks like he’s out cold. And, oh god, there’s blood soaking through his shirt on the left side. Oh god. Fuck.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” you gasp out with a strangled laugh, “This isn’t happening. John, wake the fuck up. Seriously. What the fuck even is this. Who gets knocked out by a collapsing playground. What the hell kind of freak accident is that? Is this your idea of a shitty prank? Is Kutcher going to jump out from behind that tree with a smug ass look on his face? Hahaha holy shit I can’t believe this.”

Your voice breaks as you release a sob, and you shake off the hands of the people around you. There’s nothing they can do right now. Someone’s already called an ambulance, so all you can do is sit here, uselessly waiting. Looking down at John’s pale face, looking completely foreign without that wide goofy smile and those pretty blue eyes.

You feel water begin to streak down your cheeks, and you reach down with one hand to touch John’s cheek lightly, your entire body shaking.

“John, don’t you dare d-die,” you stammer, your voice cracking again. “That shit will just not fly. I don’t care if we haven’t seen each other as much. I don’t care if you were avoiding me for some weird, backwards reason. You’re my best friend, and I can’t imagine life without you. You- I-.”

You suck in a breath, squeezing your eyes shut and dropping your head down to rest it on his chest.

“I fucking love you, you idiot!” you scream, completely ignoring the damn spectators crowded around you. “I’ve been in love with you since we were seven years old! And I’ll hate you forever if you leave me before I can tell you that! God dammit, John!”

Another sob breaks free of your chest, and you just stay kneeling over him, your entire body shaking as you just fucking lose it and cry.

“You….love me?”

Your eyes snap open and your jaw drops as you look down at the boy beneath you.

John’s eyes are half-open, looking unfocused with pupils slightly uneven. He blinks rapidly, staring up at you with a vacant, confused expression on his face.

Then, his mouth slowly twists upwards into a smile.

“Seriously?” he rasps, his voice quiet and strained, “Wow, I….can’t believe it! All this time…I’ve been trying so hard to not fuck things up between us….because I thought if you knew how I felt….you’d run screaming in the other direction…But you…”

His eyes flutter, and his words die away. But he keeps staring up at you, that same small smile on his face.

“John…” you choke out, and you can’t think, you can’t speak, because this is just way too many emotions for you to handle at one time, and you feel like you’re going to pass out or throw up or cry some more. Because John is badly hurt and maybe dying or something, but it…it sounds like he…

“John,” you whisper, running one finger along the skin of his cheek, “You…?”

It looks like he’s fighting hard against passing out again, but he manages to grin up at you, eyes staying on you even as the sound of sirens grows closer.

“Love you too, stupid,” he whispers, “Let’s go on a date…when I’m…not being assaulted by playground equipment.”

You let out a strangled laugh, and lean back down to rest your head on his chest, staying with him until the paramedics arrive, and whisk the two of you away with the promise of John making a full recovery, and the two of you embarking on something new and exciting together in the future. 

**Author's Note:**

> LOOK I FINISHED IT ON TIME HOLY CRAP GO ME.  
> sorry there were no adorable kisses it's hard to have kisses when you are severely concussed im gomen  
> (I wrote this so fast so very fast so little time omg so busy this past week sorry omg)


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